A Les Leopold opinion piece in Huffpo argues we need a special 10% annual wealth tax on people who have a networth in excess of $500 million and that we need to nationalize the 19 largest banks.  Hmmm… regarding the wealth tax: what about non-persons? – that is, what about for-profit and not-for-profit corporations (including labor unions and the AARP) with book values in excess of 500 million? Why should only wealthy individuals have to pay the wealth tax when these wealthy organizations manipulate Congress and society to their will as much or more so than the individuals?

And regarding nationalizing the big 19 banks:  it will never happen because the federal government will have to admit to the scam it has been running over the last year.  To take the big banks over and force them to break up – that is to force them to hand (say) two-thirds of their deposit liabilities over to smaller banks also requires opening up the value of the assets that these deposits have financed to public scrutiny.  Then the massive yet-unrecognized losses on those assets would have to be recognized and paid by the taxpayer in one big event.  So nationalization as suggested will never be chosen by the government.  However, YOU can force them to make the choice they will not otherwise make – that is downsize the big banks and recognize the losses! Simply take your deposits out of the big banks and move them to your small local banks.  It’s that simple. The government will have no choice but to take over the big banks and sell the banks’ bad assets for what they can get for them.   Now that’s voting with your feet!

From the Huffington Post (ht Naked Capitalism) :

The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.

This dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic economists. In the Fed’s thrall, the economists missed it, too.

The FED’s dominance of the economic research field also explains how the FED was able to get so many economists to sign a petition that urged continued “independence of the FED”.  We’ve said it before: If the FED is independent from Congressional oversight, then we are just trusting that a “benevolent” FED will oversee itself. What/who made the employees of the Federal Reserve so good, so trustworthy?  How did only they, of all the regulators in the world, escape the evil temptation to cater to its own special interests – that thoroughly besets the rest of the world?  It’s a neat trick – but we just don’t buy it…